Tuesday, February 27, 2018

I do the cycle of pockets one last time before I really start to panic: right, then left jacket pocket, then right and left jeans pocket, then back pockets. No key.

After checking under the truck, then retracing my steps, I head downstairs to the storage space, my mind racing with paranoid imaginings where someone has picked up the key to our rented truck and is just waiting for me to walk away so they can steal it.

Monday, February 26, 2018

The fog halos the streetlights as the dog jigs sideways down the sidewalk for her last walk of the night. The streets are empty, except for this guy who crosses the street in the middle of the road to walk past me and doge.

My limbic system immediately goes on high alert, and I grab my keys and put on my mean face. The doge sniffs a tree unconcernedly as the man passes within a few feet of me on the otherwise uninhabited street, and we walk to the front door, unmolested.

Sunday, February 25, 2018

"This biologist came into the booth today," I tell Katie as we're sitting on the stools at the kitchen table. "He deals with, like, invasive species, and I did not," I say raising a finger pointedly, "talk about kudzu, and talked about invasive Argentinian red ants instead."

Saturday, February 24, 2018

March, Katie and I have agreed, is gonna be us hanging out, watching movies, and deep-cleaning the house of the devastation we have wrought upon it for the last several months as we've gotten her business off the ground.

Trudging up the stairs after the doge's last walk of the night (she clambering awkwardly up in front of me, one laborious step at a time), I imagine, for instance, taking up all the rugs in the apartment and scrubbing the wooden floors that lie concealed beneath to a warm golden glow.

This satisfying image gives way to a further image of the rugs, gone, and all the furniture too, and everything out of the apartment to the bare white walls, the way it would look if we were moving out. The very idea of leaving this place (something we have no intention of doing) fills my heart with a heavy, wet sadness, and I have to pause at the door to let it settle before going inside to get ready for bed.

Friday, February 23, 2018

She's furiously texting, walls of blue scrolling up the screen, interrupted only by small, pleading gray replies. "I deff don't need compliments but I can't handle when you" too far and fast for me to follow over her shoulder.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The woman gets up from her table and, in putting on her jacket, nearly knocks over my drink. The hostess quickly assesses the situation, quietly slips over and, with a few deft adjustments, secures the safety of our drinks and makes sure the lady's jacket doesn't get wet.

We exchange glances, the hostess and I, and in response to her apologetic eye-roll I mime placing the oblivious woman's still dangling sleeve over the candle and setting it alight.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

"Are we FaceTiming?" my Dad shouts over the phone after he picks up, and so I pull the device away from my ear and punch the button that brings up his friendly face on my screen. I'm lying back in my bed, and I adjust my pose a little in the tiny inset picture of me on the screen to minimize my weak-ish chin.

"Why are you cheeks so red?" he asks, still smiling.

"Oh, I'm just mad about something," I say, realizing, as I say it, that that inconsiderate email I read right before I called them must have gotten to me more than I thought.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Through my headphones, over the music, I hear a heavy thud like the sound of someone pounding on a door, and I quickly look down the train, to find a woman at the other end of the car picking up her large old fashioned umbrella which she's just dropped.

That explains that; I go back to my music and staring out the subway window as we pass over Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn.

Suddenly, a floral, medicinal scent, definite but difficult to identify, faintly reaches my nose, and I again scan the car to try to locate its source, only to find the same woman who dropped her umbrella now vigorously rubbing hand sanitizer into her palms.

From behind her head and back pops a chubby little set of arms and legs, and I see that she's toting around a little one in a baby carrier, so I guess that explains the hand sanitizer, too.

Friday, February 16, 2018

She pushes onto the train, though no one is in her way, and right up beside me where I'm holding on to the pole, utterly indifferent to my personal space. The train has plenty of room where she might stand, but she's already put down her grocery bags and is intently perusing her magazine practically up against me in the shadow of my arm.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

"Armor class five!" I exclaim, after describing a scenario between the dog and the cat to Katie (the doge walked by the cat's perch on the chair, and the cat reached down and slammed her claws into the doge's thick fur, eliciting exactly no response whatsoever).

"Is that some kind of nerdy card game reference?" she asks skeptically as she leans up against the door frame to the kitchen.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

I practice my breathing exercises and yoga early in the morning in front of a SAD lamp, not because I'm particularly depressed, but more as a preventative measure, so my already pretty good mood gets a boost.

As I'm doing it this morning with my eyes closed, though, I notice the light seeping through my eyelids has a distinctly different quality.

When I open my eyes, the lamp is still on, but for the first time in months, out the window behind it, between the buildings across the street, the sun is coming up. I look down at my chest and, instead of the pale bluish glow of LEDs, all I see is the shadow of the lamp, surrounded by a corona of fiery sunlight.
-------------
One year ago: Expectation of Privacy
Two years ago: Prescient
Four years ago: Time Travel Weather
Five years ago: Revolving Door
Ten years ago: February in a Nutshell

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

The dog sniffs her usual tree (after sniffing her usual rocks), so I stand around with a not terribly bright look on my face until she finishes, and two guys walk by, with a third coming the other way.

"Patrick!" one of the first two says. "We're just going to get a bite to eat beforehand."

Monday, February 12, 2018

Everyone, including me, seems "off" today, so I am unsurprised when this guy comes on the train, his energy all spikey, and sprawls his long, lanky frame over the bench opposite me.

I keep my headphones on as he tries to engage the couple next to me in conversation, but apparently it's not all that successful, as he ends up shaking his head in disgust at them and lapsing into silence.

But he's not able to stay still for long, and he reaches into the plastic bag he's carrying, pulls out a beer and a lighter, which he uses to pop the top (this despite the medallion from which glowers a disapproving Haile Selassie dangling around his neck), and takes a deep swig.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Why are we waiting for the war to start? Eyes glazed over while the news only serves as a timetable for when the monuments will go up.

Rain starts to fall as I walk under the arch memorializing the soldiers and sailors who died in the Civil War, and the air looks unsettled, unfriendly and wary, gray clouds yellowing sickly with light from an unknown source.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

My brain has chewed on this decision for long enough without coming to any conclusion. "I need to stop thinking about this for awhile, so I can make a decision," I say to Katie as we're standing in the subway station.

"See, I can't stop thinking about something until I make a decision," Katie says thoughtfully.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

For about a week, my foot has been going numb as I walk around the city - a sure sign of some sort of nerve compression.

In response, I've shifted the strap of my (often very heavy) bag to the other shoulder.

I can feel the weight of it shifting the angle of my hips as I walk home from the subway, and I think about the way that we try to balance ourselves, unable to avoid the burdens of life, overcompensating and getting out of whack until parts of us go dead or numb and we're forced to change.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

"New York is different from my home," says the Austrian artist. He's here opening up his first American show, and it's been pretty rough for him, what with agents trying to gouge him and galleries with contracts going for their pound of flesh.

I think of all the trouble I've ever had here, all the times things haven't gone my way, sometimes through no fault of my own, but just as often because of something I did.

"I wish you nothing but blessings, and a long happy marriage," the guy says slowly, carefully, after taking a look around the booth at all of Katie's sculptures. He turns to me with a smile: "But if you ever got divorced, can you imagine having to take all these into court to do the division of property?"

I laugh, and he warms to the topic. "Or, like, going to counseling, and telling her," miming a beggar kneeling, "'You're patient with butterflies, why can't you be patient with me?'"
---------------
One year ago: Meeting Danny
Two years ago: Expertise
Three years ago: Biometric Timebomb
Four years ago: Thankless Work

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Stuck in the darkness of the tunnel, on the way into Manhattan, time passing, anxiety rising as I grow increasingly late. Finally the train begins to move.

As we begin to slowly climb the bridge into the sunny blue sky over the river, maintenance men pause in their work on the tracks (the same work that's been causing us to creep along for the last twenty minutes) to watch us pass. One worker in particular leans against a trestle, exhaustion slackening his expression to bone-weary neutral, and the sight of his weariness unclenches the frustration that has been building in my chest, leaving me free to watch with gratitude the sun glittering the water beneath us.
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One year ago: Alarmed
Two years ago: Why Downtown?
Three years ago: Full Moon
Four years ago: Timor Mortis Conturbat Me
Seven years ago: What Goes Around Comes Around
Ten years ago: Accordion Sweetness

Saturday, February 3, 2018

A long day at work and a couple of glasses of wine have me just the tiniest bit buzzed as I take the garbage and the recycling downstairs to put it out on the curb. Not actually drunk, you understand, just the edges on the world are a little bit blunter than when I got home.

I feel, as I round the stairs to the landing on the second floor, an urge to sing very loudly, and not any particular song as much as just a loud "la-di-da-dum" at the top of my lungs.

It's only a passing notion, though, mild and easily ignored, but I realize how really drunk people must feel when they get what seems like a great idea to do something kinda stupid, and instead of waking the building I just keep doing what I'm doing: taking out the trash.
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One year ago: Solidarity
Two years ago: Priorities
Three years ago: They Can Smell It On You

Friday, February 2, 2018

"I don't know where you're going," he says as we're leaving the market at the end of the day, "but my protip is to walk through the market."

This is perfectly logical: his way is a long block indoors, it's quite chilly out, and the wind whips off the Hudson and over the West Side Highway with vicious cold in its teeth to shriek down streets and buffet foolish pedestrians who choose to brave it.

But to follow him, admitting, essentially, that I hadn't really thought things through?